Monthly Archives: March 2008

One of the things I love about Facebook is the mini feeds that appear on your friends’ home page, containing any information about your updates. You can control what aspects of your own page appear in the mini feed, so for example if you don’t want your relationship changes, profile updates or anything else like that to be broadcast to your friends you can filter it out in your privacy settings.

What I like to do however is to have some fun with it. Over the past few months I have been adding random porn movies to my favourite movies section, purely so that they appear in other people’s feeds. For example, the screen shot below shows that I have added ‘Virtual Sex with Jill Kelley’ to my favourite movies.

My favourite movies now reads like a veritable top shelf of adult entertainment… the best bit is of course that all of the movies I’ve added (just for fun) are actually real, so any connoisseur of adult films can smile and nod to themselves when they see my status change.

Obviously I’m referring to you, Jay, there. I wouldn’t want to add a fictitious porn movie now would I? I’d be the laughing stock of the seedy smut movie lovers world.

Everyone who knows me knows what a caring, sensitive soul I am. I’m all for charities and stuff, such as Cancer against Christians, yet I do take issue when someone’s a bit stingy with the meat.

For example, I was at the Leigh Arms last week for lunch and used their carvery. The chef asked whether I wanted turkey or beef, and naturally I said both (as any hungry chap would) and the git carved the thinest, tiniest slice of turkey I had ever seen, then equaled his skills with the blade when he cut me a sample of beef.

What am I, Kate Moss?

So, I was forced to make up for the lack of sustenance on my plate when it came to helping myself to the vegetables. I piled the plate higher than many thought physically possible, with more food than any one person could hope to eat.

Obviously, I didn’t finish it. In truth I barely made a dent and it took me a while to burrow down far enough to even find the meat.

This prompted many people to comment how I wasn’t thinking about World hunger, starving children in Africa and all that bollocks. Well yes, while I’m sure the food on my plate, and indeed the food I wasted, would have fed a family of nine in Africa, my selecting a few less sausages and roast potatoes doesn’t mean the food I left on the carvery counter was going to be posted to Kenya.

It wasn’t, it would have been eaten by some other glutenous diner, thrown away, or worse yet heated up for the next day. My piling all of that food on my plate simply meant that the Leigh Arms would have to order more Yorkshire puddings the following week.

One of Google’s mottos is “don’t be evil”, meaning they shouldn’t do anything that takes advantage of the user’s quest for information. They shouldn’t abuse their position, cheat with results, that sort of thing.

However, today Google has succumbed to evil and turned to dark side, sort of. Well, they’ve gone black at least.

France’s last remaining veteran of World War I died Wednesday at age 110 after outliving 8.4 million Frenchmen who fought in what they called “la Grande Guerre.”

Now, while I think it’s great that someone who was around in WWI is still alive, or was earlier this month, is it really that much of an achievement that a French ‘soldier’ managed to survive so long? Let’s face it, the French didn’t actually do a lot of fighting anyway. The Germans and the British were at it hammer and tongs the whole time, so any of them surviving today is something worth shouting about, but as France’s contribution to war is to eat some cheese, drink some wine, give a Gallic shrug and offer up an extensive collection of finely made white linen in exchange for their flag, any Frenchman surviving isn’t really that surprising.

If Lazare Ponticelli put as much effort into war as his adopted countrymen then he was always going to last a good few years.

As for why an Italian would choose to fight for France, that’s a whole other ball game.

Lucky puppy James Welch headed over to New York on St Patrick’s day week for the Search Engine Strategies conference. As well as giving a talk as one of the registered speakers he was interviewed on every SEO’s favourite radio station, Webmaster Radio.

You can listen to the interview here, though he is introduced as James Walsh for for some reason.

American’s eh? Considering he was also called ‘dude’ during the interview, James Walsh isn’t bad for someone from Stoke.

In January Deb Smith from Torfaen Council successfully sorted out my council tax problem when I had received a summons and demand for money for unpaid council tax on a property I couldn’t even enter. That was good, well done Deb.

However, I have just received my bill for the next year April ’08 – April ’09. The bill is for something close to £1,000 as I’ve been charged the full amount, on a house that I’ve barely seen since August.

Now, surely I should able to get some sort of discount as I don’t live there? Well, yes. If there was no furniture at all in the house I could claim a 50% discount for several months, however there is a bed, a dining room table and the odd other piece… meaning I’m not eligible for that discount.

What about single occupancy? Surely I can at least claim that? I’m not living with my ex-wife anymore am I. Well, have a listen to this phone call I just made to someone who was extremely rude, suggesting I look in a dictionary for a definition of ‘living in a house’.

If the house was empty of furniture and no one was living in there I’d get a 50% discount. If I lived in the house on my own I’d get a 25% discount. If the house stands empty but has a table in it, I get charged the full amount… even though I’m not using any of the council’s services. No waste collection, no street lighting, no police force… nothing. The full amount.

I despair at this. I really do. Looks like I may have to move back into my house, using up the resources of Torfaen Council, just to claim a 25% discount on their council tax? How messed up is that?

I was stunned (though considering past experiences maybe I shouldn’t have been) to receive a bill from the Inland Revenue last week for the princely sum of £4.17 for interest on late payment. Obviously, I don’t actually owe this because as we’ve established already the Inland Revenue made the mistake of sending my completed Self Assessment Tax Form to someone else, at a completely different address.

Something that seems to be a theme with me.

So… I phoned the Inland Revenue today to sort the problem out and, well, as you can probably guess it didn’t go according to plan. It seems that after over a year trying to sort this out I will need to submit, in writing, an appeal over the £4.17 that they have incorrectly demanded from me.